The air was
uncomfortably chilly. I, as always, had foresight enough
to dress for the weather. Unfortunately, Blantz rarely paid
heed to the local climate, and this time his inattentiveness
was not without consequence.
“God’s bane!” he
exclaimed.
“What is it
now?”
“Is it not
enough that we must endure the uncivilized iciness of this
miserable planet? Must we contend with all these buzzing
pests as well?”
“Hush!” I sighed. “You
will startle the natives.”
Peering through
the tall grass, I returned my attention to the two subjects
we were observing. Departing from the herd, they had just
seated themselves along the shore of a small river. Fortunately,
they were preoccupied with removing objects from a container
that the larger creature had brought with it, and appeared
not to notice the commotion.
Muttering to
himself, Blantz waved his arms about testily, forsaking his
responsibilities amid efforts to repel a swarm of small winged
animals that had taken a sudden liking to him. My own protective
clothing insulated me quite well from their attentions, but
the humming cloud followed him wherever he went, pricking
his skin whenever he rested long enough to give one of the
creatures the chance to land on his exposed skin. Invariably,
this prompted him to wail like a small one in need of discipline.
“I am getting
cold.”
“Next time,
wear your field wrap,” I whispered.
“I prefer the
feel of air against my skin. It reminds me of home.”
“Then kindly
refrain from whimpering.”
“I shall voice
my complaints in whatever manner I deem appropriate.”
Lifting an
observation aide to one of my middle eyes, I watched our
subjects spread a large piece of cloth along the riverbank.
Then I gazed about the rest of the field, carefully watching
for signs that their companions might be approaching to look
for them. Seeing nothing warranting alarm, I lifted my transcriber
with my left front arm; Blantz, meanwhile, was too busy whining
to provide any help, leaving me to focus the image recorder
with my right ones.
“In addition
to the prevalent use of insulating coverings to shield them
from the atmosphere, subjects appear to prefer using insulating
material when interacting with uncovered vegetation,” I noted,
for the creatures were extending what looked like a rectangular
piece of brightly colored cloth on the ground before sitting.
It was a ritual others had observed elsewhere on the planet—or
so it was reported in the background materials we had been
given before venturing down to the surface—and so it
seemed to be a point worth recording.
Not that Blantz
would have noticed. He was busy dancing around the copse
of small trees that concealed us, trying to rid himself of
the hemogliverous swarm that hovered about him. He may have
been too big for them to devour, but what the small creatures
lacked in size they made up for in persistence. By a boon
of fate, our subjects had activated a noisemaker—a
device that buried the sounds of the planet amid a seething
torrent of dissonance. Its purpose was unknown, but for the
moment it helped to conceal the yammering and writhing movements
of Blantz.
“You fool,” I
hissed, wagging a rear arm in his direction. “You are no
more help here than you are at meal time!”
“And I suppose
you would still sit for being a meal yourself to these mindless,
needle-tongued afflictions?”
“I would not
have been so foolish as to come without my field coat!”
As Blantz persisted
in thrashing about unhelpfully, I noticed that the noisemaker
appeared to be having an effect on our subjects. They each
started bouncing wildly about, and the larger one began wailing
mournfully, its voice sounding much like the birthing throes
of a sea cow giving life to an unusually large litter.
“Violent reaction
to noise may reflect an involuntary response to unpleasant
stimulus,” I recorded, wondering why these creatures would
intentionally torment themselves in such a way. But those
were conclusions for others to draw. For now, I was faced
with more pressing concerns.
“Gahhh!!!” screamed
Blantz, running frantically about in circles, now being chased
by a herd of larger flying animals. Unlike the nearly invisible
pests that had been pursuing him, these beasts wore stripes
of black and yellow, and Blantz yelped in alarm each time
they touched him. As Blantz scurried around our thicket,
I rose to peer through the grass again.
“Gahhh!!”
Fortunately,
the din from the subject’s machine masked us quite as effectively
as an electromagnetic cloak, and they were paying no attention
to us at all. Instead, their interest had turned to the large,
brightly-colored container that the larger creature had carried
all the way from the stone clearing, where they and others
of their kind had left their primitive chariots. Slowly,
and with much care, the two natives were removing the container’s
contents, sprawling its bounty over their ground insulation
until there was little room left for them to sit. While the
lack of room seemed to be causing them a few problems, my
companion was causing problems enough for me, and proving
to be a source of distraction.
“Gahhh!!!”
As I turned
to give Blantz a stern lecture on proper scientific decorum,
he crashed into me, sending us both sprawling on the ground,
scattering our recording instruments among the weeds and
grasses and cracking my outer nostrils against a tree root.
He landed on top of me, his arms still flailing wildly. As
he seemed in no particular hurry to alter our circumstances,
I deemed it prudent to press the matter myself.
“This is entirely
unacceptable!” I bellowed, immediately alarmed that my irritability
might have alerted the natives to our presence and compromised
our observations. But a glance told me that I was worrying
needlessly, for they were now busily occupied in the business
of feeding themselves. Hurriedly picking up our instruments
to resume documenting our observations, I was dismayed to
see that our heat sensors were quite shattered, and our visual
monitor now had a crack in the lens.
“Will you behave
yourself?” I hissed quietly. Blantz, however, raced off in
the opposite direction, trailing a buzzing swarm in his wake.
I briefly considered chasing after him to bring the matter
to a resolution, but concluded that his absence would probably
improve our operating procedures. I decided to postpone any
further discussions until later.
I peered through
the monitor. The cracked lens had split the images into four
uneven quadrants, and all movement seemed to be drawn to
the center. It was actually quite pretty—with the blue
sky and the green foliage blending together the movements
of our subjects into a kaleidoscopic melange of fragmented
native wildlife. But it was totally useless for the task
of making scientific observations. Panicking ever so slightly,
I tossed it aside and turned my attention back to our subjects,
who were still engaged in consuming the contents of their
storage box. Looking closely, I noticed that the exercise
had made them become somewhat agitated. All at once they
began what seemed to be a vigorous argument in their primitive
language, which sounded to my ears like agitated mewing,
mingled with the occasional groan. At the same time, they
began pushing at one another with their paws and attempting
to silence each other by placing their muzzles over various
parts of each other’s necks, faces, and mouths. The growing
frenzy appeared to make them uncomfortably warm.
“Subjects exhibit
both testiness, and a reduced need for thermal insulation
following intake of nutrition,” I noted in my personal recorder,
as the subjects began shedding various layers of insulation.
Oddly, this only seemed to cause their testiness to increase,
and they soon began wrestling with renewed vigor, employing
methods of combat that seemed comically inefficient. Their
grunts and moans indicated a high level of distress, but
both seemed equally tenacious, with neither making any movement
toward escape. Unfortunately, my observations were doomed
to yet another interruption.
“GAAAHHH!!!”
Blindly crashing
through a stand of bushes, Blantz ran into the clearing,
heading right for our subjects—who, startled by the
intrusion, leaped to their feet and began running around
in circles, emitting their own peculiar howls as they raced
wildly about, tripping over their artifacts receptacle and
a large water-soaked log before sloshing through a muddy
patch of riverbank and splashing their way into the deeper
water. Colliding with a large tree, Blantz rolled wildly
on the ground, his arms flailing away at the yellow swarm
that swathed his head. The subjects, in the meantime, were
busy yowling their way down the river, yelping and hopping
as their uncovered feet encountered the sharp rocks that
littered the riverbed.
Rising from
my place of concealment, I strode angrily to confront my
incompetent assistant.
“You incorrigible
idiot!” I remarked, striving to maintain what remained of
my composure. “You are not fit to gather droppings from an
incontinent toad, much less help a true scientist conduct
a proper wildlife study!”
I was about
to loosen my own observations about certain recessive traits
in his family’s gene pool when I was interrupted by the signal
from the expedition leader, summoning us to the point of
re-embarkation. Angrily, I started to gather up the equipment
when I noticed that in their haste to leave, the natives
had left the bulk of their belongings behind. Moving with
dispatch, I retrieved as many of their artifacts as I could
find, including most of their discarded thermal coverings.
Some of the items I recalled seeing adorn their bodies; others
I was seeing for the first time. One was a particular puzzle:
a small black triangle, made of some semi-sheer fabric and
joined at the ends by thin pieces of black string. It had
been quite hidden from view, but was doubtless a weapon of
some sort, though primitive weapons were usually made of
sturdier materials.
As Blantz
ran around blubbering like an infant, I finished gathering
their insulation equipment and we prepared to depart. Fluttering
my jowls angrily, I knocked Blantz about the head with two
of my rear arms as I passed, and tried to steady my nerves.
As the mission had been an unqualified disaster, I was grateful
to be leaving.
This feeling
of gratitude was, however, short-lived. And as we neared
the zone of departure, a feeling of foreboding arose in my
soul.
Once again,
things had not gone smoothly.
And yet again,
I would have another disaster to explain to the dour and
humorless Raladorf.
Back at the
ship, the Groupleader was not in a forgiving mood.
Not that I
expected anything different. Raladorf was never in a good
mood. It was as if his bowels perpetually churned with acid.
As always, I presented our findings as objectively as possible.
This time, however, the incompetence of my assistant was
undercutting my effort to present our mission in the brightest
light possible, making any pretense of objectivity little
more than a wispy phantom.
“Now, please
tell me if I understand you correctly…” began Raladorf.
“I would not
presume to guess whether you do or not,” I interrupted, hiding
my disdainful smirk beneath a veneer of concern. Raladorf
had the reputation of being among the most insightful groupleaders
in the Legion of Science. This reputation was undeserved,
of course; he rarely understood anything I had to say, but
I had long ago discovered the advantages of a tactful façade.
I smiled as he took a deep breath before continuing. It had
long been obvious—at least, to me—that he was
painfully aware of his own limitations. I took a guilty pleasure
in making him wonder whether I knew it, as well.
“If I understand
you correctly,” Raladorf continued gruffly, “you conclude
that this planet’s semi-sentient species is unpredictably
aggressive…particularly among their own kind.”
“Yes. As I
indicated in my report, they attacked each other without
provocation.”
“And the incident
you cite as documenting your conclusion…”
“There was
no outward manifestation of danger until they began to claw
at each other with their paws. Once their attacks began in
earnest…well, they were actually quite merciless in that
regard.”
“They have
two upper appendages that they use to manipulate their environment.”
“Yes…two appendages.
Each paw contains one opposable digit.”
“If the behavior
you observed was aggressive, why would they not simply keep
using their paws, rather than pummeling each other with their
lower torsos?”
This question
puzzled me, for it displayed a familiarity with my studies
on other worlds that I had not anticipated. Still, as a mere
functionary, Raladorf was no match for the logic of science.
“We have seen
other forms of native wildlife use various parts of their
bodies to attack, on worlds throughout the galaxy,” I replied
reassuringly. “Some use their teeth, others their claws.
Several species we observed here have growths or horns on
their heads that they use for combat—and one four-legged
creature, found largely in the mountains, crashes its own
head into the head of an opponent. Except for the location
of the interaction, I see no real difference.”
Raladorf looked
skeptical. But his lack of understanding did not surprise
me, given the limitations his intellect had revealed in the
past.
“The variety
we see in Nature knows few boundaries,” I smiled, concealing
my growing impatience beneath a placid surface. “We can only
speculate on the causes—but, as scientists, we are
bound by objective facts.”
“But it seems
so clumsy—”
“Perhaps to
us. But I would never imagine butting my head into yours
as a means of settling whatever disagreement we may be having,
as other creatures on this world seem to do. Perhaps these
semi-sentients evolved their peculiar manner of combat to
protect their simple but developing brains, which are well-protected
from the point of attack. But whatever the cause, the conclusion
strikes me as inescapable.”
Peering at
me through his ponderous eyes, it was obvious that Raladorf’s
lack of understanding would once again threaten the scientific
integrity of our mission.
“Glig and Balangha
have proposed that this behavior stems from mating patterns
and rituals. Not from combat.”
“Glig and Balangha
are simpletons and fools!” I snapped, immediately regretting
my display of temper.
“It is an alternative
explanation for the mode of pelvic interaction that you observed.”
“Their opinions
have no basis in science,” I replied, somewhat more haughtily
than I would have preferred.
“But does it
not seem…”
“Their training
in the biological sciences is superficial at best!” I said,
pressing home my most telling point with all the intellectual
rigor at my command. “And their observational technique leaves
much to be desired.”
“They, at least,
brought all their equipment back intact,” Raladorf exhaled
slowly. “And though young and inexperienced, they do seem
rather bright.”
I resisted
the urge to note that neither of the two youngest members
of the expedition was burdened with a clumsy oaf for an assistant.
Instead, seeing that logic and reason would be of little
use in helping Raladorf understand the intricacies of exobiology,
I smiled blandly and answered his remaining questions in
a manner suited to his limited grasp of science. But as I
glided to my living tube, I was struck once more by what
seemed to be the growing bane of modern civilization.
Ignorance abounded
in the Universe, it seemed. And when scientists were left
to struggle against a stubborn and prideful refusal to accept
the truth, there was little to do but ensure that the truth
was passed along. Moving down the corridor, I reflected that
scientific progress was never smooth or easy. It seemed to
come piecemeal, overcoming prejudice and short-sightedness
if we were lucky; miring itself in petty squabbling if we
were not. Fortunately, I was not altogether helpless in my
efforts to advance the cause of science. I had been well
schooled in the finer points of scientific inquiry and discourse,
and knew that there were ways for those with vision to help
it along.
Passing the
information console, I glanced down the corridor. Seeing
that I was alone, I entered my personal code into the Disseminator—as
well as Balangha’s, who took few precautions to ensure the
privacy of his own access code and rarely read his reports
more than once before passing them along. Transmitting my
own report and conclusions to the Central Repository, I took
the precaution of overwriting the Glig-Balangha report with
an account of the day’s weather, before surrendering access
and proceeding on my way.
Sliding down
the hallway, I gurgled with satisfaction, and found myself
able to relax for the first time in days. Advances in science
were often tortured and filled with controversy enough. Making
sure that the idiots at the Repository reached the proper
conclusions quickly meant that we could move on to more profitable
studies on more hospitable planets, without wasting time
on minor points of dispute that were scarcely worth the trouble.
Nodding at
the salutes of the passing underlings and menials, I looked
forward to my rest. The trip to the simian-infested world
had been frightening in many ways—not the least of
which was their habit of filling the air with loud, raucous
yapping. But all things pass, and I had no doubt that the
memories of this trip would soon fade into the oblivion of
time. Soon I was as one with my sleeping chamber, floating
from the chaos of existence into the blissfulness of a well-earned
slumber.
